Japandroids Wrap Up the Party with Fate & Alcohol
The Vancouver duo’s triumphant return is also their grand finale on what they say is their last album.
Every party eventually comes to an end. Japandroids are shutting it down on their own terms, before the beer is gone, before the cops come, before the bouncer has to throw everyone out into the street. It’s an about-face for Brian King and David Prowse, two guys who made the epicenter of the party into the core of their band. The duo started playing together as Japandroids in Vancouver in 2006, releasing three albums of stadium-sized indie-rock at ever-longer intervals before going quiet following a tour in 2018. Now, with King newly sober and about to become a parent, Japandroids are billing their fourth LP, Fate & Alcohol, as their last: The duo’s triumphant return is also their grand finale.
It’s grand indeed. Fate & Alcohol steps back from the more expansive palette of their 2017 album Near to the Wild Heart of Life to emphasize the core elements of Japandroids: clangorous guitars, pounding drums and shout-along vocals. That’s the sound that made the band’s 2012 release Celebration Rock into the musical equivalent of “Mardi Gras meets New Year’s Eve,” to borrow a line from “Alice” on their latest. It would perhaps overstate the case to say that Japandroids have arrived at some newfound maturity on these last 10 songs, but in some ways they’ve become more reflective.
That’s evident in two ways in King’s lyrics here (he wrote the words on nine of these 10 songs). First, they dig deeper than pairing a handful of repeating couplets with a ton of gang-vocal “oh-oh-ohs,” which was standard (and electrifying) on Japandroids’ earlier efforts. Second, on many of these songs, he’s looking beyond what had always seemed like a non-stop bacchanal for something with a different—maybe even deeper—kind of meaning. “Don’t wanna know if you love me if you ain’t gonna do something about it,” King declares in “Upon Sober Reflection.” A few tracks later, on “Positively 34th Street,” he’s still thinking about a woman he met years earlier (while hungover, naturally), with whom he felt an uncommon connection. “Didn’t share a bed but we shared the same dreams,” he sings over surging guitars and clattering drums. Mooning over a “walking, talking, drinking, smoking, gambling kind of girl” is a different vibe from conquering every bar in your path with the dudes, but it’s one that feels truer for musicians now in their early 40s.
If Japandroids’ frame of reference has shifted, the band’s sound is as powerful as ever—maybe moreso. King and Prowse never set out to be virtuosos, but they’ve learned a thing or two over the years about dynamics and musical interplay that makes these songs crackle with energy. The guitars are thick and gritty as they churn through opener “Eye Contact High,” while the overdriven tone on “Upon Sober Reflection” vibrates like a fork stuck in an electrical socket, before shifting into a fist-pump chorus. There aren’t as many full-throated wordless unison vocals here as on past efforts, but King and Prowse shout out the refrain together on “D&T,” and hit surprisingly tight harmonies on “Positively 34th Street.”
Maybe there’s an extra sense of catharsis at work here because Japandroids made Fate & Alcohol knowing the album would be their last. It’s a valedictory that finds King and Prowse at the peak of their power, and though their decision to end the band is disappointing, there’s also a certain purity in it. Sometimes it’s better if rock ’n’ roll doesn’t have to grow up, and with just four albums, and nary a dud, Japandroids will exist forever in the celebratory haze of a wonderfully misspent youth.
Eric R. Danton has been contributing to Paste since 2013. His work has also appeared in Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe and Pitchfork, among other publications. He writes Freak Scene, a newsletter about music in Western Massachusetts and Connecticut.